Verse of the day · August 29
Why does Jesus point at ravens instead of any other bird?
A man storing his crop had just been counted a fool. The raven held up next has no barn at all.
Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?
Luke 12:24
A man's ground had brought forth plentifully, and he spent the story before this one working out where to hoard it. It left him a fool in the sight of God. The men standing there had left everything they owned to follow Jesus, had no plenty or variety to glory in, and might well have thought that warning was not aimed at them. So the warning turns round on the men who had least, and the thing put in front of them is a bird.
Covetousness has two ends, and Matthew Henry follows the discourse through both. At the top it is a sensual complacency in the abundance of this world's goods. At the bottom it is an anxious solicitude about the necessary supports of life, the temptation of those who have but a little of this world, which was the disciples' case at best and more so now that they had left all. Having more of this world is no protection from the second kind. Riches bring with them always an increasing load of cares and anxieties, Albert Barnes has it a few verses earlier, and cannot alleviate one pang or drive away one fear.
Matthew has the fowls of the air in general. This one names the ravens, and John Gill supplies the reason: fowls of very little worth, disregarded by men and odious to them, unclean by the law — and taken care of by God all the same.
How a raven is fed had been argued over for centuries. The Jews had a notion that the old birds are cruel to their young and hate them, so the Lord takes pity and prepares flies or worms for them, which arise out of their dung and go into their mouths. One of their commentators had the young hatching white, so that the parents do not know them for their own and bring them no food; some Christian writers mention it, and Gill records it as not sufficiently confirmed. What Aristotle, Pliny and Aelian do affirm is plainer: as soon as the young are able to fly, the old ravens turn them out of the nest, and even drive them out of the country. Which is where Job has them, wandering for lack of meat and crying unto God, who gives it to them.
The ravens neither sow nor reap, and have neither storehouse nor barn. Men have all of it. They sow and they reap, they have the seedtime and the harvest in the appointed seasons, they cast their seed into ground that springs it up and brings forth much fruit, and they gather it ripe into barns and storehouses that supply them until another season comes round. None of that is the raven's case, and God feeds it anyway. The distrust belongs to the men with the seed and the barns, not to the bird without either.
Further on in the same address they are told not to be of doubtful mind — not to live in careful suspense, with the mind perplexed between hope and fear, ever upon the rack. The nations of the world seek after these things, he notes — people who look no further than what they shall eat and drink, and who, having no all-sufficient God to confide in, burden themselves with cares. The Geneva Notes, glossing the discourse from its opening line, answer it in one sentence: earnestly thinking upon the providence of God is a present remedy for this life against the most foolish and wasting worry of men.
The same address goes on to tell them to sell what they have and give alms. They are to sell what is superfluous rather than want wherewith to relieve those that are truly necessitous, and whatever is found a hindrance in the service of Christ. And they are not to think themselves undone if, by being fined, imprisoned or banished for the testimony of Jesus, they are forced to sell their estates, though they be the inheritance of their fathers. That instruction and the one about their next meal went to the same men.
The life a man wants kept fed was given him without any care or forecast of his own, and so was the body he wants kept covered. Whoever did the greater can be left with the lesser: the meat that supports the one and the raiment that defends the other. And the conversation has more in it than food. Further on it hands over a kingdom nobody earned, because it was the Father's good pleasure. They are told to fear not the want of anything that is good for them; if that is what he means to give, he will bear their charges on the way to it. The bird nobody valued, driven out of its own country by its own kind, gets fed. The men worth more than it were promised a kingdom, and still had to be sent to a raven before they would trust him for a meal.
Drawn from Matthew Henry, John Gill, the Geneva Bible notes and Albert Barnes.
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